My little family here (okay, it’s big, there are six of us) like to do things ourselves. I bake all of our bread (don’t bother to be impressed–I use a breadmaker, it’s like cheating) and bake/cook most things from scratch, Steve fixes everything, we recycle and reuse as much as possible. So, this spring when I mentioned that we should buy new watering cans for the kids because the two we had were broken, Steve got creative and came up with this:
Instead of recycling these plastic nut jars, Steve had stockpiled them in the garage figuring we could use the nice containers. So he gathered up four of them, drilled holes in the lids, and made them into watering cans. Perfect solution! This way we’re not buying more plastic (because most, if not all, kid-size watering cans are plastic) and we’re reusing something that can be recycled when we’re done with it. Win-win-win.
And they work!
Unfortunately, there was one slight problem. See those pretty flowers up there that are being watered? We forgot to rinse out the containers before using them the first time. Do you know what happens when you salt your plants?
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| With salt. |
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| Without. |
I didn’t know this. Steve did, so he had that oh-crap moment right after the watering occurred. We hoped they’d get through it. And they might have . . . if I hadn’t salted them again. (Ahem.) It was totally by accident. We did some tie-dying this year, and I added salt to the dye solution. I did not pour dye solution over the plants. Really. But I did rinse out the containers and poured the rinse water over the same planter full of sick plants. (I’m trying to not waste water, here, people.) As soon as I did it, Torin said, “Mom! There’s salt in that water!!”
Ooops.
The plants looked worse and worse as summer went on, so Steve took the initiative and pulled out all the sick plants, removed the dirt, put healthy compost in and replanted the plants. They started greening up right away. And now the planter looks like this:
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| Hmmm, which one got salted? Hard to tell now. |
It is possible that some children around here helped thin it out a bit.
But mostly, it was the salt.
i have many oops moments like these! very cute story and i guess another life experience to add for the whole family :)
Yup, I don't think we'll be salting any more plants in the future. :-)
That is funny in retrospect but not so funny while ripping out the salted plants. You've changed the format all around here! Can't go wrong with white. Good luck with your book.And that salsa looks yummy, there's tons of it and I have tortilla chips.
Yes, I've changed things. I wanted to have the really wiiiiide format that I've seen on some blogs but couldn't find in the blogger options when I started out. Just found it the other day in the retro options. Of course, going this way limits the personalizing I can do (like colors and fonts). Trade one thing for the other. I'm happy with the stretchy space, though, I like how it looks. As for the salsa, bring the chips and come on over!